5.  The applicant was born in 1962 and lives in Deva.
6.  In November 2004, the prosecutor’s office attached to the Alba‑Iulia Court of Appeal opened criminal investigations in respect of a large number of people, including the chief commander of the Deva police and other police officers, on suspicion of their involvement in an organised criminal group engaged in practising the illegal gambling game “alba‑neagra”.
7.  As part of this complex set of proceedings concerning a large number of people in Deva allegedly involved in organised crime, on 2 December 2004 investigations were initiated against the applicant and three other people suspected of being members of an organised criminal group, an offence created by the Prevention and Combat of Organised Crime Act (Law No. 39/2003). The applicant and another defendant were police officers, and in this capacity were also suspected of favouring offenders and blackmail. The other two defendants were suspected of organising the gambling games.
8.  In the evening of 2 December 2004, the applicant and his three co‑defendants were arrested and detained for twenty-four hours.
9.  The prosecutor attached to the Alba-Iulia Court of Appeal submitted a proposal for the extension of the detention for another twenty‑nine days. According to the prosecution’s version of events, the two police officers became members of the criminal group in 2003. They collected protection money from the network of people who were organising the gambling games in Deva and the surrounding area. In exchange, they provided information to them concerning police raids organised by their colleagues and the best places to hold the gambling games. As expressly stated in the proposal for the extension of the detention, this version of events was supported by statements of the victims, witnesses and defendants, and a summary of recorded telephone conversations.
10.  At a hearing held on 3 December 2004 before the Alba‑Iulia Court of Appeal, the defence requested that the prosecution and the court deciding on the application to extend the applicant’s detention put at their disposal all of the materials on the basis of which the applicant’s continued detention had been proposed.
11.  According to the applicant’s lawyer, the only evidence in the file were the statements given by the applicant and the other three defendants arrested on the previous day, which did not reveal any incriminatory facts.
12.  One of the main pieces of incriminating evidence submitted by the prosecution was a summary of various telephone conversations which had been recorded. The recordings had been made by the police as part of a secret surveillance operation concerning the entire criminal group. The prosecution submitted the summary to the court during the hearing with the recommendation that it should not be consulted by the defence. The defence’s request to examine the recordings was refused by the court on the grounds that the recordings concerned the merits of the case and that this was irrelevant to the extension of detention.
13.  In spite of the defence lawyer’s express request to have access to the rest of the evidence mentioned in the proposal for prolongation of the detention, such as the statements of the victims, witnesses and other defendants, the Alba-Iulia Court of Appeal neither replied nor provided any explanation for their absence from the file.
14.  In her final oral submissions, the applicant’s lawyer stressed that she had not had access to the summary of the recorded telephone conversations or the incriminatory statements against the applicant. She therefore concluded that according to the evidence in the file, there was not the slightest indication that the applicant had committed the offences retained in his charge.
15.  After hearing the oral submissions of the defendant’s lawyer and of the public prosecutor, the court ordered the prolongation of the pre‑trial detention for another twenty-nine days. It found that there was a strong suspicion that the applicant had committed the offences detailed in the prosecutor’s proposal for detention and that he had been involved in organised crime relating to illegal gambling games.
16.  On 9 December 2004 the High Court of Cassation and Justice dismissed the applicant’s appeal against the decision of 3 December 2004 as groundless. It upheld the decision on the same grounds as the first‑instance court.
17.  On 27 April 2010 the Argeș County Court convicted the applicant as charged and sentenced him to five year’s imprisonment.
18.  The applicant appealed. According to the latest information provided by the parties, the proceedings against the applicant are still pending.